


Bedrooms

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Cupid (TV 1998)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-01
Updated: 2007-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I didn't think it'd be this difficult," Alex murmurs, his voice lazy, heavy with the hour and the distance between them.  The phone line crackles, but Claire can still hear his breathing.  She shifts in bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedrooms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlnamedpixley](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=girlnamedpixley).



> Written for girlnamedpixley for the episode1x10 challenge.

"I didn't think it'd be this difficult," Alex murmurs, his voice lazy, heavy with the hour and the distance between them. The phone line crackles, but Claire can still hear his breathing. She shifts in bed.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Well, no," Alex answers. He exhales. "I knew it'd be hard, I just didn't realize . . ."

She can hear – knows – what he's feeling; the ache that's harder to ignore once it's dark and the bed's half empty. "I know."

"I miss you."

"We'll see each other Friday."

"Two days from now," Alex whines.

Claire laughs quietly. "Two days. Better than two weeks."

"I might not make it."

"I'm pretty sure I can think of an incentive program."

"Oh, yeah?" He sounds hopeful.

She smiles. "But if I tell you now, you certainly won't sleep, and you'll hate me in the morning."

"Claaaaaire."

"Nu-uh. Time for all good Alexes to be in bed."

"I _am_ in bed."

"And _asleep_ ," she soothes.

Alex hums his acquiescence. "Okay."

"Okay."

"I love you."

The sentiment still makes her stomach tighten and flip. "I love you too," she whispers, and waits to hear the click of him hanging up before she does the same.

~*~

They've made their relationship last for six months (so far), navigating different time zones, missed phone calls, unpredictable visits, and truly spontaneous flower deliveries, sustaining what they can with emails and postcards and random gifts delivered by USPS. Alex had a photo of his face fixed to a mug and sent it to Claire with her favorite coffee beans inside; she retaliated with a mouse-pad showing the front of her house, the place they first kissed, and felt quietly satisfied when he confessed it made him crazy. Her group's going well, his job's going great, and sometimes she thinks perhaps it's worth it, the agonizing separation, just for the moment when he steps off the plane and into the concourse at O'Hare, sleepy and eager, a contradictory package, face lighting up when he searches her out.

But at other times she knows it isn't – nights like this, twenty-four hours before she'll meet his flight, Chicago frigid with a too-cold fall and her fingers so numb she can barely slide her house keys into the door. It's tonight, when she's a day away from coming home to _him_ , that she feels his absence the most keenly – the house dark, the heat still low, everything echoing back the loneliness she's trying to repress. She drops her briefcase by the coat stand, defeated, hangs up her jacket with a lump in her throat, self-pity humming under her skin when she unwinds her scarf. She's hungry but unmotivated, climbs the stairs to her bedroom wanting sweats and an oversized shirt before she thinks of the leftovers she'll scrounge up for dinner. Petulance buzzes up and down her spine – she doesn't want to play fair tonight, wants to call him and yell at him and tell him he's an _asshole_ , never mind that he listened to her advice, and there isn't enough wine in the world for this, enough hot water in the tank to fill the tub enough times to soak away how she feels. There isn't –

"Mmmph?"

Claire freezes just inside her bedroom door.

There, in her bed, just barely illuminated by the warm glow of the street lamp beyond her window, lies Alex, rumpled, barely awake. "What time issit?" he asks, rubbing his eyes.

"Thursday?" she says stupidly, because it is, it's Thursday, and he's coming home _tomorrow_ , not today.

Alex blinks at her, propped up on one elbow. "Not day - _time_."

"Um." She crosses the room, eyeing him uncertainly, heart beating wildly in her chest.. "Almost 7.30?" She reaches out and pokes him in the shoulder.

"Ow," he says dramatically. "What's that for?"

"Are you really here?" she asks, and oh hell, she's _this_ close to crying. Hormones, it's probably hormones – hormones, and . . .well . . . the way he's looking at her, and the fact that she can smell him already and . . .

"Hey," he murmurs and tugs her down on the bed, work clothes and all. "Hey, I just – " he kisses her temple, her cheek " – wanted to surprise you."

"Oh," she manages, choked up, trembling, (embarrassed) and she holds it together for a polite, fragile moment before she shoves at the covers, pushes them out of the way, wriggles beneath them and molds herself to Alex's sleep-warm skin, buries her face against his neck. She really is crying now, and okay, in five, ten minutes she'll let herself be mortified by that, but he's caught her with her defenses down and he's stroking her back, murmuring how much he loves her, right into the crown of her hair, and oh, oh _god_ , she's missed him.

"I quit my job," he whispers when she's calmed to the point where all she's doing is hiccupping.

She pulls back and blinks at him. It's hard to focus on his face – her eyes are puffy and sore. "You did – " (hic) " – what?"

"I tried at least." He pushes her hair back from her forehead, smiling affectionately. "They still want me."

She smacks his arm.

"Hey," he smiles, eyes kind. "We worked out a compromise." He leans in and kisses the corner of her eye, the angle of her jaw.

"Comp – " (hic) "- romise?"

"Mmmm."

"What comp – " (hic) "- romise?"

He brushes the tip of his nose against hers. "That I'll work national features from Chicago," he murmurs.

She goes utterly still in his arms. Then hiccups.

"What d'you think?" he asks tentatively.

"I think – " She struggles to smile and blink back tears at the same time. "I think – "

"Ohhhhh, no, no, no," he soothes. "No more crying. This is a _good_ thing. This is me snoring in your bed every night. It's a girl's dream, underwear kicked beneath the dresser, towels on the floor, kitchen cupboards always left ajar, someone drinking milk right out of the carton."

She laughs weakly. "You're taking out the trash for about a year, you jerk."

"See? Manly household tasks," he nods. "Trash and . . . Well. Okay nothing else comes to mind . . ."

She laughs again.

"But I am pretty good at taking care of my girlfriend," he says softly, watching her.

"Says you," she whispers, sliding her fingers beneath the hem of his t-shirt, scratching her nails up his spine.

Alex breathes in sharply. "Yeah. Says me." He leans to place a kiss to the upper curve of her breast, through the shirt she's still wearing, professional work-wear that doesn't feel like it belongs on her body at all.

Claire arches up into his touch, offering encouragement. "Wanna take that idea for a test run?" she asks, and thinks it probably sounded more like a challenge in her head than it does when it makes it out over her lips, breathy and plaintive.

"God, yes," he murmurs, rolling her, and he presses her down into the mattress with the whole of his body-weight, kissing her sweetly, coaxing her eyes closed as she finally accepts that he's home.

~*~

They drag themselves out of bed eventually, clumsy and sated, pad downstairs to find food and don't turn on a light until Alex flips the switch for the spotlights above the kitchen island. He lifts Claire up to sit on its edge, covers her mouth with one finger when she starts to speak. "Nu-uh," he chides fondly. "I got it." And he hums to himself as he moves about her kitchen, pulling bread from the pantry, cheese, ham and tomatoes from the fridge, constructs two enormous sandwiches and uncorks a bottle of white wine. "Here," he says, handing her a plate, picking up his own and nudging his way between her knees, standing with his belly all but touching hers. It's peculiarly intimate, to be so close, placidly eating sandwiches when she's still so conscious of the damp, welcome heat of him between her legs. She touches him lazily, skimming a hand over his bare shoulder, pleased when his skin shivers up into goosebumps beneath her fingers.

"I love you," she murmurs, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, head tilted to one side.

He smiles, chewing methodically, a fleck of mayonnaise caught at the edge of his lip. "Good," he offers. " _Good_ ," and he kisses her as she splutters a laughing protest.

"You're supposed to say – "

"I love you, too," he grins, setting down his sandwich, reaching to frame her face between his hands and kissing her sweetly, his tongue hinting at all the wicked she knows he's keeping in check.

She pulls back, wraps her legs around him and pulls him forward so that their bodies are flush. "So when do you move back?" she asks, finger indulgently tracing the whorls of his ear.

Alex shivers. "Well." He glances down. "See, that's the thing . . ."

Claire raises an eyebrow. "Uh-oh. Sounds ominous."

"Not _ominous_ , exactly." He blows out a breath, fingers mapping circles against the base of her spine. "I just – I have to finish one story before I can set up here for good."

Claire raises her other eyebrow. "Well, that's not so bad."

"Yeeeeah . . ."

"Just spit it out."

He looks up, guiltily. "I gotta go to Iraq."

She blinks at him. "You gotta . . ."

"Go to Iraq."

"Iraq."

"Yeah."

She feels every previously lax cell in her body tighten, become alert. "What's in – no, forget I . . . no, _don't_ forget I – what's in _Iraq_?"

Alex rolls his shoulders. "It's coming up on the anniversary of Desert Storm and the paper wants to do a retrospective – where's the country at now sort of thing. Should Bush have toppled Hussein while he had the chance, blah blah blah."

Claire lets her hands drop from his shoulders to the island. "So – not an . . . _official_ visit, then."

"No." He shakes his head. "We can't, not if – I mean . . . the story's not where his people would take us, you know that."

She swallows, lifting her chin a little. "So you're moving back to Chicago just as soon as you've done some undercover investigating of a megalomaniacal, probably genocidal madman who . . ."

Alex picks up her hands, twines their fingers together even when she tries to pull away. "I have to do this. It's important."

"It's dangerous."

"Yeah." He meets her gaze unflinchingly. "But it matters, Claire."

Claire clenches her jaw. "You could've told me."

"What, the moment I saw you? I was kinda thinking . . . "

"Now it all just feels like you were – like it was softening me up for – "

"Hey. _Hey_." Alex waits until she looks at him. "What just happened was _nothing_ but me missing you, wanting you, _needing_ you, goddamit Claire, it's – " He swallows. "It's been as hard for me as it has for you and we _both_ chose this stupid mess of a situation. I didn't touch you because I wanted you to be okay with me going to Iraq, what are you _thinking_ to even say that?"

"I'm thinking how goddamn, fucking _angry_ I am at you," Claire spits back. "How can you come back here with – with promises of us and this and together and then - _Iraq_? Undercover reporting in _Iraq_. Is it fun for you, to offer me everything I want and then take it away again . . ."

"What am I taking away?"

" _You_ ," she says, voice catching. "You, what if you don't – don't come back?"

"Claire."

She bristles. "It's a real possibility, don't even try and – "

Alex's breath leaves him a rush. "I'm not going to . . ."

"Don't," she says, trying hard to keep her composure. "Don't make me a promise you can't keep." Her bottom lip starts to tremble and she ducks her head, sick and tired of being this person, stuck on some emotional tilt-a-whirl, never knowing what's going to come to the surface from one moment to the next.

"I love you," Alex says, squeezing her hands. "This was – I just wanted to come home."

She presses her face into the bare skin at his shoulder, skin that smells of them both, of sex, of sweat. "Take me back to bed," she whispers. "Please." She feels his lips at her temple. "Show me."

~*~

In the cold, clear light of day, Claire decides that her initial reaction was just the tiniest bit hysterical. Alex is, she tells herself, ticking off points on her fingers as she waits for the coffee pot to fill, experienced, diligent, capable, and generally prudent – he may have an inexplicable preference for getting into verbal punching matches with Trevor, but he's not a man with a death wish. Besides, she reasons, filling two mugs and tucking the paper under her arm, the Times wouldn't send him if they weren't confident he could do the job. She has nothing to worry about. And four more weeks of waiting won't kill her – the last twenty-six haven't so far.

But the weekend might, she realizes, slipping back into the bedroom to find Alex sprawled on his stomach, naked as the day he was born, quilt caught low at his hips. He's beautiful – features smoothed out by sleep, hair a dark muddle against the pillows, the dip of his spine making her fingers itch. She pads to his side of the bed and sets down one cup of coffee, and by the time she gets back to hers, his nose is twitching. Sipping lazily from her mug she smiles and waits, watches as he blearily opens one eye and says, "cuff'?"

"Your side," she offers, putting down her own mug so that she can slip off her robe and climb back into bed with him, savoring the warmth of the sheets against her skin.

"Mmmm cuff," he mumbles, pushing himself up on his elbows and reaching for his cup, noisily slurping half the contents before setting it down and flopping back into the pillows.

Claire piles pillows behind her and pulls the quilt up to her chest. "I brought up the paper," she offers.

"Paaaper," Alex says, but his eyes are closed.

"Want a section?"

"Noooo." He opens one eye. "You."

She raises an eyebrow. "You want . . . my section?"

Alex huffs a sound of resignation and reaches with an uncoordinated hand to grab at the front page and throw it aside. "You," he mumbles, pawing at her arm.

"Oh," she smiles. "Me." And she lets the rest of the paper slide to the floor as she wriggles lower in the bed, inching over to where he lies. "Better?"

Alex throws an arm over her and snuffles a yawn into her shoulder. "Mmmmmm, much," he offers, and closes his eyes again.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday, Claire thinks as she eases herself onto her side, presses close and strokes a hand down his back, watching him sink back into sleep – worse ways to say goodbye, even for a few short weeks. She kisses his forehead. "We'll be okay," she whispers, "I'll be okay – it's just a matter of willpower and distraction and confidence in the general direction of our relationship . . ." But Alex is gone, the words glancing over his skin with the force of her breath, then dissipating into the half-light of morning.

~*~

Claire doesn't change the sheets for two weeks after Alex leaves – she's been too busy, she rationalizes; it has nothing to do with the scent of him on the pillow. Bed is her refuge, warm where Chicago is cold, safe where the world is not, and full of good memories as opposed to the pressing questions that lie in wait for her when she leaves the house – is he okay? Is he hurt? Is he happy? Does he miss her?

There's no communication – a necessary precaution, she knows, but she hates it all the same, hates it with the soft vulnerability of her own scared heart and the tough professionalism of a therapist who knows that communication is the key to any successful relationship. More than once she wonders if this is some cosmic joke, a clue delivered in a ruthlessly efficient box – is she supposed to discern the limits of their happiness, she wonders, the potential for their relationship to fail? How exactly can anyone be happy, contented, with their boyfriend underground in a country peppered with pockets of hostility, incommunicado and likely glorying in it, dirty and uncomfortable, eagerly pursuing any story he might find? And how insecure is _she_ , how ridiculously conditioned by gendered expectations of female behavior, that she wishes she were the thing – the person – being pursued, that she resents his job, that she hates the silence, that she's sure she'd as soon beat on him with her fists as look at him right now? She is, she thinks, losing her mind, swinging back and forth between clinical dispassion and heart-wrenching sadness a hundred times a day, and the sheets still smell of Alex right up until the point where the dispassion wins out and she lectures herself about bed bugs and dust mites and vacuums the mattress as well as snapping linens across the bed.

It's possible, she muses, that she's overcompensating.

She eats badly, and hates herself for it, swears off lattes and back on them several times a day. Her work days get longer and she fuels herself with sugar and her body feels all wrong – swollen and off-kilter, like her center of balance has changed, and god, she hates Alex even more when that happens, hates herself for being this stupidly weak over a man who – she takes back everything she said about him being prudent – has a death wish, has to, it's the only explanation. She's exhausted – emotional distress, she tells herself clinically – and nests the moment she gets home, piling the comforter around her and sipping hot chocolate from Alex's favorite mug.

The weekend before he comes back, she doesn't get out of bed at all. It's not depression, she reasons, nor weakness – it's just her brain listening to her body and acquiescing to what it strongly suggests she needs: quiet, warmth, rest, respite. There's nothing wrong with hiding once in a while (although the number of times she has to remind herself of this suggests parts of her strongly disagree), and she has a pile of books she's been meaning to read, not to mention utility bills that would scare the Queen of England, so turning the heat down and living under quilts is not only prudent, it's creatively sane. She's probably coming down with something, she reasons, not to mention has the world's worst case of PMS, and her period is late, which is just testimony to the kind of stress she's been under. She gets little bursts of something like cramps once in a while, so she knows she's due to get really pissed off at the world any day now and rue the fact that she didn't buy tampons when they were two for one at CVS, but for right now she's just aching and tired and if she naps a lot, well who the hell's to know? (No one, that's who, because _someone_ 's in Iraq, and god, she should've bought Kleenex when she should've bought tampons, and maybe it's time to prescribe herself SSRIs.)

She wakes up Sunday morning – three weeks, six days, some number of hours she's not counting since Alex left – to what she half-thinks sounds like a key sliding into the front door. She blinks at the ceiling, fuzzy and petulant, hears nothing else, hates her mind for fabricating noises that are hopeful, and god, she's making no sense, pulls a pillow over her head to hide from a world that is judging her implicitly, even if no one knows what the hell she's thinking – people _would_ judge her if they knew. She closes her eyes and tries to go back to sleep, half imagines Alex calling her name, feels herself pouting at the grossly unfair – not to mention pathetic – boundaries of her imagination, and by the time she realizes it really _is_ him, he's standing in the doorway, smiling at her fondly, bearded and sunburned and squinting at her messed-up hair.

"It's freezing in here," he says conversationally.

She blinks at him, gaping.

"Hi." he smiles. "I woke you up, didn't I?"

"Sort of?" she manages. "You're – I . . . "

He crosses the room and crouches down beside her – she realizes with a jolt she's been sleeping on her side of the bed all this time, and surely there's a limit to how much she can miss one person, even while unconscious? – picks up her hand where it's lying on top of the quilt. "Got my story. Came home early," he says, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

She swallows and stares at him. "Becoming a habit," she whispers. "Surprising me."

"Good surprise?" he asks, meeting her gaze, looking so earnest she's almost scared. But it is, it is, a good surprise – her heart's fit to crack wide open with the force of it, and she nods, smiling, squeezing his hand.

"Yeah," and god, more tears, she's so tired of crying, four long weeks of nothing but welling up at a moment's notice, and while tears are good, part of the human expression of emotion, this proclivity for crying is just _annoying_ , not like her at all, and she roughly pushes at his shoulder so that she can get to the Kleenex, half sits up and blows her nose. "PMS," she says by way of apology.

"Already?" he asks, and must see something cross her face since he drops her hands and holds up both of his, palms out as if in surrender. "Hey, hey, I'm not – it's okay, just – s'kinda early, two weeks out, right?"

Claire pushes herself all the way up into a sitting position, folds her arms across her chest, trying to figure out which of all of this is the most surreal – that her boyfriend is kneeling beside her bed, a cut on his jaw, sand in his boots, sunburned from a climate she's never experienced; that he apparently _keeps track_ of when she gets her period (perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, perhaps because he's an anal-retentive asshole, perhaps because he's plain _weird_ ); that she's angry as hell at the fact that the look he's giving her is unwaveringly kind; that he's passing judgment on it being freezing in her house when hell, he's not contributing to the utility bills yet. She lifts her jaw. "Late, actually. I haven't – you were – women's bodies tend to respond to stress in very particular ways and – "

She watches as both of his eyebrows rise. "You haven't – " He waves a hand. "Since I left?"

Claire blushes, picking at the quilt with one hand. "Hi Alex, nice to have you back from your murderously hazardous writing assignment in the middle east, by all means, let's talk about my ovaries."

"I just – " And _he's_ blushing now. "I just – I mean. There's no chance that – "

"What?"

"There are other reasons women don't get their periods," Alex mumbles, scratching the back of his neck. "I just wondered if – "

She laughs mirthlessly. "What? If I was pregnant?" And the moment the words are out of her mouth she goes cold. "Oh my god, I could be pregnant."

Alex shrugs a little, as if to say, _yeah, that's what I was wondering._

"I can't be pregnant!" She blinks at the general tableau of her bedroom, trying to take in the utter insanity of this sort of idea. "I can't be – oh god, I could really be pregnant. Oh my god, I need to – " She throws back the covers. "Hi, um – I need to – " She waves a hand to suggest Alex get out of the way, all but trips over him in her haste to rummage for a sweatshirt, pull on her running shoes. "How was Iraq?" she asks, tying her laces.

Alex eyes her as if she's a bomb that might go off. "Um – you know. Pretty hairy."

"Huh, hairy, yeah," she says, jamming a baseball cap on her head. "And uh – so you got your story." She looks around for her wallet, realizes she left her bag in the hall.

"Yeah," he says, following her as she rushes downstairs. "It's pretty um – uh, where are you going?"

"CVS?" she says brightly, wallet in her hand, picking up her keys from the dish on the hall table. "I need a pregnancy test."

"Wow." Alex wets his lips, rubs his jaw. "Okay. Okay, so you might really – "

"I don't know," she says patiently, as if he's a two-year-old needing explicit directions and firm discipline in order to learn the fruitful boundaries of the self. "Which is why I – "

"Sure, sure," he says. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "I was gonna shower since, you know, flights since – "

"Excellent!' She nods, kisses him on the cheek. "Back in no time," she says, and she's gone before she can process the look on his face.

~*~

Alex is still in the shower when she comes back, two tests in a flimsy plastic bag, one to know and one to be really sure, either way. On most occasions, Claire would never deign to do something as gauche as use the toilet while he was barely two feet away – no matter what bodily fluids they might be party to in bed, there's something wholly different about watching your significant other do their private, biological business in the bathroom, and personal space is a large part of every partner's needs – but today is different. Today she might be pregnant, which means Alex is going to get to see her body in all kinds of ridiculous ways over the next several months, not to mention be right beside her while she hollers blue murder and _births a child_ at some point, so he can just keep on showering and singing Bob Dylan because she's going to sit and pee on a stick. Two sticks. Two sticks that can measure the completely unexpected. It's nice to know that curve balls can be quantitatively analyzed – reassuring in a way.

"Uh – " Alex sticks his head around the curtain.

"Hi honey," she says brightly. "Shower feel good?"

"You're um – " Alex gestures with a soapy hand.

"Yes, yes, I am," she says, setting one stick down and ripping the packaging from the other.

"Okay, well, I'll just be over here. With soap," Alex says, and disappears behind the shower curtain again.

Sticks peed upon, Claire tidies herself up, flushes, apologizes profusely when Alex swears up a blue streak at the sudden change in the temperature of the shower, and begins to pace back and forth, chewing on her nails and waiting for five minutes to pass. "Twenty-four Mississippi, twenty-five Mississippi," she murmurs as Alex switches off the shower and pulls back the curtain.

"How long?" he asks, reaching for a towel and wrapping it around his hips.

"Um – I – uh . . . I'm supposed to wait five minutes? I think? I forget. I threw the boxes away. Some time anyway. Pink line means yes, nothing means no. I – " She peers at the sticks. "I . . ." she reaches to pick one up, staring. "Oh god. Pink line. Pink line."

"Pink line?" Alex is at her shoulder, peering at the stick, damp against her back. He reaches for the other stick – fumbles it the first time. "Pink line here too, pink line." She looks at him as he swallows and looks at her. "Pink line."

She swallows and nods, on edge. "Pink line."

Alex shuffles from foot to foot. "Do you - _want_ a pink line?"

"Well – I mean – we never actually talked about how we feel about having children in the long term and that's a significant indicator of – "

"I want kids."

"Okay, good, me too," she says in a rush.

Alex half-smiles for a second. "So right now?" He waves his stick feebly. "I mean – do you want kids right now? Do you want kids with . . . with _me_ , right now?"

Claire looks down at herself, at her absolutely still-flat belly. She can see Alex's bare feet in her peripheral vision, long knobbly toes and the tan lines where he'd been wearing socks overseas. "I – I do," she whispers, biting her lip. "Do you? With me? Right now?"

"Oh god, yes," he says in a rush, pulling her roughly into his arms, crushing her to him, and he's laughing a little, kissing her hair, her temple, and her face is damp from the water still clinging to his skin and she's laughing too, stunned and breathless.

"I'm pregnant," she says into his shoulder, and he squeezes her tight.

"Yeah," he agrees. "God. Wow. Just – "

"You never, ever get to go anywhere dangerous ever again," she says, and punches him on the arm just to emphasize her point.

Alex pulls back, brushes his thumb over her cheekbone. "I'm so okay with that," he says. "I'm so completely and utterly – "

But she stops him with a kiss, a real kiss, a kiss they haven't had the opportunity to share in four long weeks, all heat and need and something like desperation, warm and safe and wanted, cherished. "I need breakfast," she blurts when they break apart, when she can finally look at him and let herself let him in all over again.

"I'll go make it," Alex nods, watching her so tenderly she wants to hide her face. "I'll go make whatever you want. You just – go back to bed and we'll . . . savor this. A while. Yeah?"

"Yeah," she breathes, filling up slowly with something slow and golden, something that's pushing light into all the places that have lingered in shadow. "Yeah." And she kisses him again.

~*~

 _several months later_ -

"Someone thinks sleep is for losers," Alex says, padding into the bedroom, Emma in his arms. "Wide awake. Full belly, clean butt, just talking to her stuffed animals."

Claire groans and turns onto her side as Alex slips into bed. "Nighttime is for sleeping," she tells her daughter, who claps her hands delightedly and crawls over to pat her mother's face. " _Sleeping_ ," Claire repeats, kissing Emma's cheek.

"I figured," Alex says, resting a broad hand on his daughter's back as she squirms on her belly, "she might drop off if we're here. Seems like she can't stand thinking she's missing something."

Claire laughs fondly. "Seven months old and already her father's daughter," she yawns.

"Hey," Alex smiles. "Her mother's pretty inquisitive too, you know."

"Hmmm." Claire reaches over to pat him clumsily on the arm. "Nice Alex."

Alex laughs at her. "Go back to sleep."

Emma squawks her agreement, then eeeeeee's softly.

"See?" Alex says, mock solemn. "Our daughter knows."

Claire snorts into her pillow, grinning, contented, lets her eyes get heavy. Once it would have kept her awake, irritated her to be gently bombarded by conversation as she was trying to sleep, but more than just her body's changed in the last year. Now it's her own secret, treasured ritual, listening to Alex talk to their daughter, accepting each babble and squeal as if it's one half of a perfectly logical conversation.

"Faaaaaaaseeeeeeeeeeeeee," Emma observes, smacking the mattress with one hand.

"Maybe in the morning," Alex says softly, and Claire's half aware of being pulled into his arms, that Emma's on his chest, that her bed – once barely big enough to hold all her loneliness – is now filled up with family, and she sighs as she falls asleep, safe.

  
Prompt: Claire POV. After six months of flowers, phone calls and conjugal visits, Alex shows up unexpectedly to tell Claire he's going to Iraq for 3 to 4 weeks for a story. (He probably doesn't tell her this until after the hot reunion sex). Soon after he leaves, Claire finds out she's pregnant. Very shmoopy, happily-ever-after ending.


End file.
